Betty Richardson Churchill

BETTY RICHARDSON CHURCHILL (AGE 86) died on October 16, 2022, peacefully, at home with her husband of 54 years. Betty, born in Colorado, lived in many parts of the US as a child, went to Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, MD, and Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA . She also received an honorary degree from UMaine. Betty developed an early love of international travel while a student at Dickinson and a participant in a college-sponsored whirlwind tour of Europe. This passion and a desire to make a meaningful contribution in a challenging field led to her decision to work at the CIA. While there she met and married her husband, Dan Churchill. They actually met at Rehoboth Beach, and Dan was immediately drawn to this one girl who rather than working on her tan stayed ever active, body surfing and playing beach sports. Given a shared love of travel, their honeymoon was a five-week, eleven thousand mile tour of the US in a 1958 Volkswagen Bus - camper conversion

Following the end of her 9-year CIA career, she continued to live abroad and to travel extensively with her husband. Betty lived in Europe (Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, and London) for 25 years and indulged a passion for travel, visiting nearly 100 countries. She developed a degree of fluency in French and German. Her passions included art (painting a convincing copy of Vermeer’s Girl in a Red Hat), music (Aïda in the Roman Arena in Verona) and cuisines (especially Asian). She regularly found wonderful inns and restaurants long before Rick Steves discovered them. She also maintained a roster of “Hotel Lobbies I’ve Visited,” listing many luxurious establishments where she and Dan could not afford a room.

From her tomboy childhood, Betty had loved sports. Tennis and skiing were favorites until aging joints led to a switch to golf. Betty instructed her husband that her ashes are to be distributed widely, especially in golf course sand traps that she visited too often. Many of her closest friendships grew out of a shared passion for these sports. Her friendships also resulted in many vacations in different corners of the world, shared with these close friends. With her sunny mischievous personality, she could giggle with the best.

Betty never stopped loving Dickinson College and cherished her classmates. After Betty and Dan returned to the US in 1998 following the last of their overseas tours, Betty focused a goodly share of her energies on that institution. With Dan, she then worked to have an impact at UMaine comparable to that at Dickinson. She wanted students who shared her belief in public service to have opportunities, as she had, to serve abroad and to understand issues and the world from the perspectives of others. These students and young alumni were very special to her.

Betty’s good fortune began to ebb when Alzheimer’s Disease made its entrance more than a decade ago. Betty, a very private person, kept this to herself as long as possible. She fought courageously against the inexorable advance of this devastating disease and held it at bay for years. She never ever complained. Despite the ravages of this illness she could (in the words of a friend) “say more with a facial expression or a laugh than most could in a paragraph.” When her friends speak of her, the words “warm, genuine, inquisitive and sincerely interested in others" recur time and again. Her family and friends remained in her memory to the very end.

Betty is survived by her husband Dan, her brother-in-law and sister-in-law Bob and Ethel Churchill, her beloved niece Katy Churchill and her nephew-in-law Jaime Zahorian. The family thanks Faye Yalung for the devotion, care and love she lavished on Betty for the last three years of her life.

On Dec. 10, 2022 at 11:00 am, family and friends will gather for a celebration of Betty's life at the Joseph Gawler's Funeral Home, 5130 Wisconsin Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20016. This will be followed by a reception at the Kenwood Golf and Country Club, 5601 River Road, Bethesda, MD 20816.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Betty’s memory to the Churchill-Richardson Fund to Develop Engaged Citizen Leaders, at Dickinson College (online at Dickinson.edu/gift or checks to: Dickinson College, PO Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17013, Attn. Office of Advancement).